Why We Should Read “Heart Berries”

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“Indian girls can be forgotten so well they forget themselves…” This haunting sentence appears on the second page of Heart Berries and could well serve to sum up the entire book – an account of Terese Marie Mailot’s efforts to remember and reclaim herself after a childhood in a family grappling with the effects of intergenerational trauma. This book asks a lot of the reader. It is written in a nonlinear, fractured style which can be challenging to follow since we cannot be sure of the order in which events have happened in the narrative. In some sense we are deciphering in the dark until the last chapters. This structure mirrors Mailot’s own experience as she struggles to make sense of her past and cope with its impact on the present. This is powerful writing about sitting with one’s stories and memory fragments, to make sense of them and to free oneself from the patterns they dictate.

As Mailot says, “Salish stories are a lot like its art: sparse and interested in blank space.” If we are willing to sit in the discomfort of the blank spaces we can learn a lot. This is a very personal look into private relationships as they buckle, reform and ultimately heal under the strain of trauma. She sees pain as something to be treasured, something which expands our hearts. It can be hopeful in that if we are are able to face it, we can be better people having Why We Should Read come through it. She says, “In white HEART BERRIES culture, forgiveness is synonymous with letting go. In my culture, I believe we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony.” Mailot demonstrates the power of healing oneself through writing as she rose from the challenges to academic success by expressing herself through art. At the Institute of American Indian Arts, she found a sense of community. “It was an Indian renaissance period… They were Indian writers, and we smiled at each other, as if this was a sovereign land and we belonged.” It is through such belonging that she, and ultimately all of us, are healed. The Warmland Book & Film Collective – a response to the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada – next meets online June 8th to discuss Witness, I Am by Gregory Scofield. Email WarmlandBFC@gmail.com for zoom link. Submitted by Ranji & David, on behalf of the WBFC